A Diamond in the Rough
by Invariant
Summary: Takes place after the live action movie. In his new life, Aladdin is having a hard time adjusting.


**It's been a while since I've wrote something. Enjoy! Takes place after the events of the live action Aladdin movie. Reviews are greatly appreciated! Thanks loves!**

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It's the verge of dusk, and he's alone in their bed chamber.

The air smells of her in here, lavender mingled with paper, sun and sea salt, a fragrance commited to his memory the night a street rat broke into a palace.

Absently, he runs his fingers over books, maps, scrolls, things he imagines had been her escape in a prison of expectation and tradition. This was her window to an outside world, to a life where she didn't drown in silk and jewels and insufficiency. In this room a lily developed the courage to become a lion, and he loves her for it.

Love.

The thought makes him grip the desk, pits something warm in his stomach he feels flush to his neck. Since that day in the marketplace, he knew she'd done something to him, captured him, enchanted him with those beautiful brown eyes and the span of her mind, her spirit. Because of her he'd made a deal with a serpent, befriended a genie, and saved a kingdom.

He saved Agrabah.

At least that's what they tell him, that's what the new Sultan said when she'd officially decreed him to be a hero, an honorable man, the beneficiary of the kingdom and the future of it's lineage.

She changed the law to marry a commoner. Thousands of appropriate suiters, and she chose him instead.

And the kingdom applauded.

Hours ago, officially, he was declared royalty.

And it's suddenly a familiar weight that pits in his gut, a shockingly acidic ache that stiffens his back when he swallows a breath, the same anxious feeling that secretly excused him from his own congratulatory party to seek comfort in the only place he could.

The quiet of everything her.

This must be the weight of expectation, he thinks, the heaviness of knowing everyone sees you, beguiles you, as more than what you think of yourself.

Irony has a name.

At least with Genie magic he didn't have to rely on his own self to impress others. He had a princely visage to do that.

But now they tell him he's done it on his own.

Even the guards that chased him through crowded streets with drawn swords, they honor his name, his status.

But he's no hero. He's a street rat. A lowly rapscallion that took a chance to love a princess, and though he's always known there was more to him then rags, societal admiration and kinglyness, was never something he desired.

He only ever wanted a purpose, a future with more promise then scraps and bread crumbs, and he doesn't know if he'll ever live up to _Ya saheb as-samu_, or _Batal_, or any of the other common tongue endearments the people use to describe him.

He's only ever been good at being Aladdin the thief.

He won't answer when she asks of his new fame, won't explain why he squirms under the pressure of being called _your excellency,_ or feels burdened in his own skin everytime he sits in another council meeting, with yet another brilliant display of her capability to rule.

And his incapability to do the same.

Aladdin sighs, dry washes his face with his hands as his chest heavies, restricts his lungs with the power of everything he doesn't deserve to have but does; with everything his worth says he shouldn't love but does.

He'll never deserve this life, he thinks, as his eyes find the map she'd held up when he was still pretending to be someone else. There isn't Ababwah anymore on the atlas, no magic blot on the paper to emboss the lie he lived. But as he holds it, crinkles it under his fingertips, it still holds the awareness of a wretching inadequacy and inferior class.

Pretending, he's learned, carries more guilt then the truth.

Among the quiet, he hears a door creek, feels her enter the room, a beauty that washes under his skin with a glorious glimmer of hope; a light he's hinged the last six weeks on.

A light he dulls out with his own self-deprication.

"Aladdin?"

He closes his eyes on the melody of her voice, tries to collect the recess of his thoughts.

"What are you doing in here?" she sounds almost amused. "I've been looking for you since you left the party."

He puts down the scroll, but doesn't turn to her. The lightness of her words still hanging in the air.

"Maybe I was hoping you wouldn't find me."

He cringes after he says it, but hopes she blames it on his social anxiety and not his need to degrade himself. And he hears her laugh in response, a lovely sound their intimacy awards him in early hours of the morning.

"Then you're not very good at this game."

This makes him grin when he turns to her. She's just as beautfiul as the day he surprised her here, adorned in colors of yellow-gold with the moonlight dancing in her raven hair. Tonight, it's pink and purple hemmed in teal, colors she wears that play off skin bronzed from their diplomatic visit to Sherebot.

Any blind man can see that outwardly, she's stunning.

But it's her wisdom, her grace, her kindness, that make her comparable to no one and if only for a second, she makes him forget his sad story. He's awestruck, again, that she would even consider him acceptable.

"You truly are beautiful."

He proclaims to her, and in both flattery and passiveness, her cheeks blush, she looks to the side with a smirk, and then back. He knows from anyone else she wouldn't appreciate the compliment, an echo of past male sentiments that only honored the obligatory ornamenting of her presention, of tradition, of a speechless voice.

Hers is a depressing history only tantamount to his own.

But she is not a coward like he.

She understands who she is. She embraces all she's given.

"You're amazing."

He says to her, and on the admission, her eyes find his, dark cinnamon that urges so much strength and loveliness into his soul, he almost feels deserving of all this.

Almost.

"No more than you are."

He drops his eyes, disbelieving, silently frustrated that she, too, believes him worthy of her adulation.

He can never escape who he use to be.

His breath constricts, again, on the thought, his flesh left pricking with insignificance in the air of who she is and what she means to him.

"Are you alright?"

She asks this inching closer to him, with a careful study that furrows her brow and rasies her hand to his face.

Only once, had he ever been good at hiding things from her, and even then, deep down, she knew his truth.

He's to common for her glory.

Unable to bear the sharp sting, he breathes it out, runs a hand through his hair, feels uncomfortable, defeated, and selfish all at the same time. He shrugs and turns from her, the air thickening with the same hopelessness, the same despair that's creeping through his veins. He sits on the chaise, somber, the crackling of fireworks outside adding to the already glorious picture of where he is.

It's so spectacular in this room, in this palace, and he's dare paltry enough to reject it.

He's only ever found confidence in a lie.

"I should be." He says, in part cynicism and part, fact. He opens his palms. "I want to be." Motioning around the room, his mouth curves, a sardonic grin unveiling his uneasiness, his discomfort.

Anyone else would know how to accept this world, this splendor.

This gift.

"But you doubt yourself?"

She says it slowly, more a statement then a question, because as she always does, she's known all along, and embarrassed, he doesn't answer. She deserves more then this from him.

He promised her a whole new world and never once considered he wouldn't be able to find his own place in it.

And the shame drops his heart to the floor. He thinks she might reprimand him, with the same disapproving look she wears when she scolds over-zealous merchants or criminals.

But she doesn't. Instead she's quiet, floats to the balcony, runs her hands down the ivory and for a minute, he thinks she's lost in a memory. Then she faces him, the red and purple in the sky reflecting magic in her hair, her clothes, colors meant for him that she makes etheral.

Just as she does everything.

"For years, kings and princes strutted through these halls..." She begins, her face unburdened, "Each of them waiting for the hand of a princess." There's that memory. "Each one wanting more riches, more territory, more beautiful things to call theirs."

She's distant for a second, but when her eyes catch his again, they're fire and water at the same time, a ginger flame caught in his umber lifesource.

"Do you know what you have that all of them don't?"

"A Magic Carpet?"

His humor falls flat on the precipece of her next point.

"A good heart."

She responds, softly, and he scoffs at this, knowing the things he's done, the way of life he'd mastered before her.

"Even if that were true," he says, just as softly, "That doesn't make me deserve all this."

"Yes it does."

She says it strongly, but he only braces his jaw, scrapes his bottom lip on his teeth, his discomfort raging into a ball in his gut. So he temples his hands, brings them to his mouth, tries to stabilize the uneasiness by staring at nothing.

"Aladdin." he hears her say, but he can't look at her. "Aladdin, those people down there.." He doesn't have to see to know she's looking down below. "Those people..._our_ people." He fidgets. "They don't love you because you're a hero. They love you because you're one of them. I love you because you're one of them."

This makes him look at her, slowly.

"Aladdin, you're kind and you're humble." she looks back to him. "You're loyal, honest. You _are _amazing whether you see it or not."

Again, this makes him unnerved, shifts his gaze, and as he digs his heels into the marble floor, he can feel the bruises already.

He hears her come to him, the coins on her bodice shuffling, and when she kneels, it's a welcome distraction to his emotional thicket. He reaches out, plays with one, the cold metal burning under his fingertip.

Burning the same way everything she is ignites every nerve-end in him.

"Look at me." she says, but he can't, just turns the coin over. "Look at me." She grabs his hand, tethers him back to her.

"No amount of wealth, or royalty or class can compare to what's in your heart." Her smile is beautiful, breathtaking, the same way it is every morning when he hums "_I love you_" into the crook of her neck. "You deserve all this and more because of who you are." She brings his knuckles to her lips, sets fire to the skin underneath.

"I fell in love with a prince without riches."

This makes him meet her eyes, and that beautiful brown pulls his soul up from the depths of misery; a sliver of hope he feels spark in his chest, a light from her words he feels anchor slowly, in his blood. When she brings her hand to his cheek, he feels the heat in her palm.

"Aladdin, you're capable of so much more then you realize."

There's promise in the strength of her stare, confidence in the weight of her tone, and it's too hard, too difficult an internal fight, not to be swayed by her.

He's a victim of her ruthless conviction.

And it's why he loves her.

"Do you trust me?" she tells him, and that umber's grown dark, a burnt brown that teases a memory of a marketplace and this terrace.

She's trapped him, and he's thrilled by it.

"What did you say?"

He watches as the languid pull of her lips lights up her gorgeous face.

"I said.." she pulls on his smock, bringing him closer, her other hand tracing up his thigh, igniting a slow molten heat below his belly.

"Do you trust me?" she whispers, her eyes, those beautiful eyes as dark as obisdion, as hot as a fever, as wanting as he.

"Yes."

Before she can say anything more, he's captured her mouth, honey and fire and longing and lust, the sweet taste of an effervescent freedom to be who he is, and loved for it.

And god, he loves her for it.

Heroism is an afterthought in her picture of him, a byproduct of his character.

He'll accept this gift, this title, this honor, because in this whole new world, this; them together, this is thier wonderous place.

He's worthy because she loves him.

A diamond in the rough.


End file.
